分税与转移支付结构:专项转移支付为什么越来越多?

Tax Sharing and Intergovernmental Transfers Structure: Why do the Earmarked Transfers Keep Growing?

分税和转移支付是联结政府间财政关系的两个重要纽带,本文研究当上级政府的目标是均衡地区经济和民生发展时,分税会如何影响转移支付的结构。理论研究表明:从上级政府角度看,当税收分成上升后,如果加大一般性转移支付力度,会让发达地区的发展积极性比欠发达地区降低得更多,这可称之为"消极均衡策略";如果加大专项转移支付力度,会让欠发达地区的发展积极性比发达地区提高得更多,这可称之为"积极均衡策略"。因此,上级政府为均衡地区发展,倾向采取积极均衡策略,即提高专项转移支付占比。利用县级和省级财政数据的实证分析结果,证实了这一点。上述研究发现从财政分权的视角解释了中国专项转移支付占比居高不下的原因。

Tax sharing and transfers are two essential links in the fiscal connection between different levels of governments.This paper studies how tax sharing will affect structure of transfers when the goal of government of higher level is to balance economic and livelihood development in regions. The main findings of our theoretical analysis are as follows.From the view of government of higher level and given that the rate of tax sharing is increasing, on the one hand, choosing more general transfers will hurt the locals' incentives for developing economy and society, especially for the developed regions. On the other hand, using more earmarked transfers will stimulate the locals' development, especially for the underdeveloped regions. So the former strategy is pessimistic, while the latter is optimistic. To balancing regional development, the government of higher level prefers the optimistic strategy to the pessimistic one, i.e., raising the proportion of the earmarked transfers. The results of empirical analysis using both of county-level and province-level data support our theory. From a view of fiscal decentralization, these findings above help to interpret why the earmarked transfers are large in size and share in China.